


The Rules

by bokeh



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, implied offscreen Clara/Ashildr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8982538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokeh/pseuds/bokeh
Summary: Post-Hell Bent. The Doctor keeps running into a waitress he met one time in an American diner.
There are unspoken rules that they keep to. He never says her name, she never says his. She never steps inside his TARDIS, he never goes into hers. And if he occasionally, accidentally, calls her Clara, well, she pretends not to notice.





	1. Chapter 1

Clara. Clara Oswald.

It’s a name without a face, no data, no memories. Whenever he tries to remember anything about her, the shape of her face, the way she smiled, or the sound of her voice, it’s like a switch is flicked, suddenly he doesn’t care at all, it’s not important, his thoughts are redirected along a different path and he forgets that he was trying to remember Clara at all. The information is still there somewhere, buried deep in the storage vault of his brain, he just can’t access it.

At least, that’s what he told her.

He remembers everything.

*

When you live as long as the Doctor, unlikely things have a habit of happening.

He’s in a city a few million light years away from Earth, looking for a shop that sells the exact size of screws that fit the component he took apart this morning, when he sees her. Thousands of billions of humanoid life forms in the Universe, and yet only one that looks like Clara. He quickly turns his back, pretending to be looking in the window of the alien shop he finds himself facing. He’s not sure what products it sells. Clothes? Scarves? It’s hard to tell on a planet where the inhabitants have four arms.

He can’t go over to her. He just can’t. Quite apart from the fact that he’s not supposed to know who she is, he can’t allow himself to go and talk to her. It’s too dangerous.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a figure come and stand beside him. The coat. He’d forgotten that he’s wearing the red velvet coat that she told him she liked so much. It stands out a mile.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she asks.

He forces himself to turn and look at her. It’s Clara, of course it is. She’s wearing a dark blue dress that he doesn’t think he’s seen before, and is looking up at him with a look of trepidation. He doesn’t know how many years it’s been for her; she still looks the same age, but then she would.

He doesn’t allow himself to wrap his arms around her in a crushing hug. He takes a breath, then in as casual a voice as he can manage, replies, “No, I don’t think we have.”

“Yes, we did. On Earth. I was working in a diner at the time.”

The Doctor glances up and down the street, looking for an escape. “Sorry, I don’t remember,” he replies dismissively. He needs her to stop talking to him. If she stays too long, he’s not sure he’ll be able to let her leave.

“Did you find her?” she asks. He knows who she means.

“No.”

Clara doesn’t speak again for a few moments, so against his better judgement, he risks another glance at her. He sees the uncertainty in the way the corner of her mouth twists, has to pretend that he doesn’t see it.

“Well, it was nice seeing you again,” she says eventually. She stands there a little longer, unsure, then turns and walks quickly down the street, not looking back.

He could call her back. All he’d have to do is say her name, and she’d come back to him.

He doesn’t.

*

The Doctor lied. The neural block never wiped his memory.

Clara holds him in much too high a regard. He could never have stopped, could never have left Clara, even if the alternative was that the entire universe was destroyed. Neither is he capable of half-measures; he couldn’t have stayed in contact with Clara and been any less close. No, the only way that he could ever part from Clara was if she did it herself.

So he tricked her into being the one to leave him, pretended that the neural block had worked, when in reality all Clara had done to the device was break it. Clara is stronger than he is. He can trust her to do what needs to be done, even if it breaks her heart. He can trust her to keep them apart.

*

The second time they meet, on a wide, bustling bridge in another alien city, she doesn’t wait for an excuse to come over and start chatting to him.

“Where’s the guitar?” she asks conversationally, smiling up at him brightly.

“In the TARDIS storeroom. One of them, anyway. Not sure which one. She has a habit of moving them.”

He doesn’t tell her the real reason it’s in there. There are too many sad songs in the universe, and they’re the only ones he finds these days, when he tries to play.

They both fall silent for a little while, leaning comfortably against the side of the bridge, countless pedestrians passing by behind them. They gaze out at the river below, filled with traffic of countless small boats carrying their wares.

“Do you ever miss home?” she asks eventually, eyes fixed on a boat docking some way upstream. The breeze catches a few strands of her dark hair and pushes them across her face.

“No,” the Doctor answers, because it’s not simple at all, but it’s pretty close to the truth.

He never told Clara exactly why he left Gallifrey, allowing her to assume that he had left out of some sense of adventure. She doesn’t know that he wasn’t the same man back then. He had done what his parents expected of him, had got married to a Time Lady of whom they approved, and attempted to settle down. But after a hundred years he was still the misfit, still questioning Time Lord authority on everything, and coming to realise more and more that he would simply never belong there. Clara doesn’t know how many times he nearly ran away but didn’t, too much of a coward to actually leave. She would be so disappointed in him if she knew.

“I never thought I would,” she says. “Dad always let me down, and all my friends at Coal Hill were just work friends, really. And if I never see Linda ever again, that’ll still be too soon. Still, now that I can never go back, what I wouldn’t give for another chat with Adrian, or to see Dad again.”

He glances at her face, sees that she’s more upset about this than she’s letting on, but he doesn’t know what he should do. He’s not supposed to be able to remember her. It would be very out of character for him to comfort some strange girl he hardly knows. In fact, he shouldn’t even still be here talking to her.

He simply says, “I’m sorry,” doesn’t touch her arm, doesn’t hold her hand.

“Oh, it’s not all bad,” she says. “I get to travel the universe. If I was still living my old life back home, I would be so bored. I just thought… you seem like the kind of person who would understand. What it’s like. To not be able to go home.”

The Doctor should leave, right now, but he can’t bear to see Clara sad.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He understands, of course he understands. He’s been alternately missing Gallifrey and running away from it all through his long life. But he also knows that nothing he could ever say to her would make the pain of it any less. And then, because he can’t think of anything else, he asks, “Do you have a,” he searches for the right word, “companion?”

“Oh yes. Ashildr’s been my… co-pilot for the last ten years.” Clara seems unsure what she should say, and he wonders if it’s because she doesn’t know how to talk about someone they both first met while they were travelling together. “She’s so old, billions of years old, and sometimes you know it, she’s so calm in the face of everything. And yet sometimes she’s so impatient, wanting to move on to the next planet as soon as possible, wanting to see as much as she can. Sometimes I have to convince her to just calm down, take it all in, remind her that the rest of the universe will still be there when we’re finished.”

Clara brushes the hair from her face, considers for a moment. “There was this one planet where the sun set every four hours, and each time, it was a different colour. I managed to persuade Ashildr to spend the whole day there, and we drank cocktails and watched each sunset come and go.” She smiles, just a little, but it’s the first real smile he’s seen today.

When she finally walks away some ten minutes later, the Doctor’s sure he’s done the right thing. Clara’s alive, sort of, she’s not alone, and she’s travelling the universe. It doesn’t matter if he still misses her so much that sometimes he can hardly breathe. Clara’s safe, and that’s all that matters.

*

It keeps happening. The odds of the two of them meeting by chance in the vast universe must be infinitesimally small, and yet their paths cross again and again. He knows that he shouldn’t, but once he sees her he can’t _not_ talk to her. She’s a burning star pulling him into her orbit, or maybe a black hole dragging him in.

They chat about whatever’s going on in their lives, about that interesting world they went to last week, all the while pretending that they’re two almost-strangers who met once in a diner, and nothing more.

The decades pass as they dance around each other, playing the roles of casual acquaintances who keep meeting through space and time. There are unspoken rules that they keep to. He never says her name, she never says his. She never steps inside his TARDIS, he never goes into hers. And if he occasionally, accidentally, calls her Clara, well, she pretends not to notice.

*

The Doctor needs to stop thinking about Clara. He needs to do what he always does in the end after losing someone and find a new companion.

So when he meets a girl, tall, blonde, nothing like Clara at all, he asks her to come travelling with him.

It’s fine, for a while. She’s laid back and makes him laugh and they have adventures together. She even does what he tells her to do, mostly. Until one day when a dam is about to break and flood an entire alien city unless the Doctor can save them in the next twenty minutes and she refuses to help. She tells him that she’s had enough of this planet already, the people are so boring, and besides, he’s saved enough planets already, can’t they just skip this _one_ , and in that moment he realises just how little like Clara she really is.

He manages to both save the city and drop his now ex-companion back home within twenty-one minutes.

*

His next companion has thick brown wavy hair and a face that’s too close to Clara’s in its roundness, but she has a good heart and a boundless optimism about the universe that the Doctor wishes he still had himself. They travel together for a couple of months, and just as he’s beginning to settle in to their arrangement, she meets a boy who sees the same qualities in her that he does. Before he knows it she’s settled down with said boy and made a new tiny human and is far too busy to come travelling with him any more.

*

After that comes a shortish girl with short blonde hair who’s stubborn and brave, and although that means she’s a little bit like Clara, it all goes well until she almost gets killed by some angry aliens who were trying to get him to reveal his plan (he wasn’t actually in any danger, he had a backup plan, but she wasn’t to know that). Once he’s sure that she’s not hurt he takes her home, ignoring her protests that she’s fine, that she doesn’t care if it’s dangerous. He can’t bear the thought of another companion dying because of him.

*

The next time the Doctor sees Clara they go for coffee on a nearby moon. From their little table they can see the planet that this moon orbits above them in the sky, slowly turning. It’s closer than any planet should be, so close that they can make out continents and swirling clouds.

Clara asks about his companions, and after he tells her the edited version, leaving out the part where he complains that none of them were as good as Clara, he asks after hers.

“Oh, Ashildr’s fine,” she replies, stirring her coffee absent-mindedly with the ornate little spoon that came with it. “The same as ever. Always acts like she’s above it all, like she’s seen it all before. Maybe she has.”

“Does she still insist on being called Me?”

“God, no,” replies Clara. “I told her that if she’s going to be in a relationship, she has to use a proper name. She’s not on her own any more.”

Clara’s very good at hiding her emotions, but the Doctor catches the exact moment when she freezes in realisation at what she’s just told him. She tries to cover it up by taking a sip of her coffee.

“Amazing, isn’t it, this moon,” the Doctor says. “It took a hundred years of space engineering to get it into its present location, into this artificially low orbit. It has to move at a ridiculously fast speed just to not fall into the planet below, and the atmosphere is kept at a depth of only a few tens of metres to keep it completely transparent. All that, just for that view.”

Clara looks up. Above them there is no blue sky or clouds, just stars in a dark sky and the planet looming large overhead. They’re sitting in a bright, sunlit perpetual night. “It’s good,” she observes, “but it’s not _that_ good.”

“There was a time when all the rich and famous from this sector would come here,” he continues. “This place was full of cocktail bars and clubs and casinos and all those other places that you humans like to go to when you have too much money. But then the planet mining industry collapsed, the place shut down, and now all that’s left are little cafes like this one and some thirty-third century architecture.”

After his story comes to an end neither of them can think of anything else to say, so they sit for a while in awkward silence. Clara has almost got to the bottom of her cup of coffee before she speaks again.

“She understands me. She knows what it’s like, to live so much longer than normal people, it–”

“You don’t need to explain,” the Doctor quickly interrupts. “Be with whoever you like. Whoever makes you happy.” And he means it, however much it hurts. If he can never be with her, why shouldn’t she be with someone else? He quickly looks away, pretending to examine a particular constellation of interest in the sky.

“…thank you,” Clara replies eventually. He doesn’t dare look at her, to see whether she’s uncomfortably awkward with the whole thing, or whether she has that expression she used to have in the old days, the one she would have just before giving him an unexpected hug.

He opts instead for explaining exactly how the space engineers moved the moon from its old orbit into its current one, and the technical difficulties of artificially holding the thin atmosphere in place, and doesn’t dare the slightest glance at Clara until the moment has passed and he’s well into his story.

*

The Doctor keeps finding new companions as he continues on his travels, but now he only allows each of them one trip with him, because he’s determined to stop running away from losing people. He lost Clara ultimately because he couldn’t bear to lose her, because he would stop at nothing to bring her back. So now he keeps on giving them up, as if to show the universe, _look, I can lose people_. However much he might like a particular companion, he forces himself to keep to this rule. Because this is what his life has to be now.

*

One day he sees Clara and knows instantly that something’s very wrong. She’s sitting on a flat ridge halfway up a mountain, on a newly-formed volcanic planet. From her vantage point she can watch the very planet below her change, see plates of land shift and liquid rock flow between them, watch the very planet being born. It will be millions of years yet before any life forms inhabit this planet, yet neither of them is surprised to see the other. They’ve long since got used to their paths crossing way more often than is statistically possible.

The Doctor makes his way over to her along the narrow ridge, and as he gets closer he can see where tears have streaked down her face. Now he knows why she’s chosen this place – she didn’t want anyone to see her like this. She doesn’t look at him as he approaches, and he wonders whether he should ask her what’s wrong, but she speaks before he’s worked out what he should say.

“She’s dead.” She says it in a monotone, the words devoid of any expression.

“Ashildr?” he asks, almost in a whisper.

Clara nods slightly, still looking out at the bubbling planet below to avoid meeting his eyes. “She was meant to be immortal. I wasn’t supposed to lose her.”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor says, aware of just how useless those words are. He wants to pull her into a hug and wrap his arms around her; to keep her there, safe, until she’s cried every tear she needs to cry. But he can’t. He’s not supposed to even know her, she’s not his Clara, she’s just some space traveller that he keeps bumping into.

“She wasn’t scared,” continues Clara. “She wasn’t angry. She just… accepted it.” She turns to him, eyes more angry now. “Well, I don’t. Everyone close to me dies. I’m sick of losing people.”

The Doctor watches her silently, helplessly.

“Tell me. What do I do?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing you _can_ do.”

“I want…” Clara pauses for a moment, unsure. “I want to bring her back. And don’t tell me that it can’t be done, because I know it can, I’ve seen it.” Her eyes flash up to his with determination. “But I know that I shouldn’t. Her death is probably a fixed point or something; she has to die. So tell me. What do I do with the pain of losing her?”

“You live. You keep on living, day by day.”

“How?”

“The curse of having an unusually long lifespan is that you have to watch those around you dying instead. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. You have to learn to carry on.”

“So what? You’re just telling me to get used to it?” says Clara in a low, angry voice. “That she didn’t matter at all?”

“No, I…” The Doctor twists his hands around each other nervously.

“If you think our small, human lives matter so little, you can piss off to some more important part of the universe. There’s plenty of it.”

“I was only trying to help–”

“I said _piss off!_ ” Clara screams at him.

Startled, he quickly backs away, and not knowing what else to do, he picks his way back through the rocks to where his TARDIS is parked.

Inside, the Doctor leans against the console heavily, feeling that everything just went very, very wrong. He realises that Clara was only angry at him because she’s hurting, but he can’t fix that, and it would be far too dangerous to even try.

It’s against the rules.

He mustn’t.

Impossible.

Back on the ridge, Clara turns to see the Doctor walking back towards her.

“What?” she asks, and the Doctor can see so many emotions flitting across her face at the same time, doubt and anger and hope.

“You’re… you’re not a close friend,” he explains awkwardly. “I hardly know you. Certainly not well enough to…”

Clara watches him silently, waiting.

The Doctor looks at her carefully. She looks so broken right now, with her arms wrapped around herself and her puffy red eyes, but he knows it takes more than that to break her. Still, he can’t bear to leave her like this if there is anything at all he can do.

He ignores the thought at the back of his mind that he _shouldn’t do this_ , takes a step forwards and pulls her suddenly into a hug. She relaxes immediately against him and he wraps his arms tightly around her. At this, she buries her face in his shoulder and soon he feels, rather than hears, her begin to cry.

Clara silently sobs against him, the only sounds her gasp for breath after each one, and neither of them say anything. There’s nothing to say. The Doctor strokes her back gently and wonders what it is about Clara that draws her to volcanic places.

After a while their position becomes less comfortable, so he sits down on the flat rocky ground, leans against the cliff face that rises up above them, and pulls Clara into his arms again. The sharp rocks press into his back but he doesn’t care.

“Tell me,” he says, once her tears have subsided, so she does.

She tells him the entire story of her last adventure with Ashildr, how Ashildr had stepped in and taken the blow that was meant for Clara. Ashildr was practically immortal, her body had learned how to heal itself from practically any injury, but not even she could recover from a metal spike stabbing her right through the heart, causing her to bleed out before she had time to heal. Clara tells him, in between sobs, how calm Ashildr was as she lay dying in Clara’s arms, telling Clara not to cry. The Doctor mumbles _I’m sorry_ into her shoulder.

Clara’s leaning back against the Doctor now, her back pressed against his chest, so they can both see the view beneath them. The Doctor looks over her shoulder, tempted to rest his chin on her shoulder, or nuzzle into the hair that falls over her ear, but restrains himself.

She seems to have stopped crying now, but the Doctor isn’t leaving. He never could. It’s another one of their unspoken, unwritten rules: Clara has to be the one to leave. He’s not sure that she knows this though.

“Do you think that… we ever met before?” Clara asks cautiously a little later.

“Of course we have. You remember the space colony last month? The place with all the blue people.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, like, in a previous life or something.”

“There’s no such thing,” the Doctor answers brusquely, and Clara doesn’t say any more.

Eventually, even Clara gets uncomfortable and gets up. The Doctor carefully peels himself off the rocks, wondering if any of them have actually made a hole in his back.

They look at each other awkwardly, unsure how to continue.

“You looked like you needed a hug,” explains the Doctor, as if this is a perfectly reasonable explanation for an hour of cuddling halfway up a mountain.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“I’d offer you a tea or something, you humans seem to like that, hot drinks every hour of the day and night, it’s supposed to be comforting or calming or something. Except you’d have to come back to my place and you probably don’t–”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve got some back in my TARDIS. In fact, I’ll go and make some right now. Good idea.” Clara looks, if not happy, at least more herself again.

“I’ll just…,” he gestures in the direction of his TARDIS.

“Yeah.”

*

Back in his TARDIS, the Doctor goes up to the upper level of the control room, aimlessly walks past his bookcases, then settles down in an armchair. He doesn’t quite know what just happened, but he feels like he failed. They’re not supposed to get that close. He was weak for allowing it to happen.

But what else could he do? Clara needed him, and he will always be there for her when she needs him, even if it breaks his heart, even if she loves someone else, even if it burns him up and splits him into pieces like an exploding supernova.

*

They don’t speak about it the next time they meet. For a little while they’re awkward around each other, but they soon slip back into their pretence of casual acquaintances.

*

More years pass and the TARDIS still keeps his timeline in sync with Clara’s. He asks the TARDIS _why_ , and, _it’s been a hundred years of this, can’t you let me move on_ , and, _you’re a space ship, surely you should be in favour of the preservation of the universe?_

She listens to his request with all the attention that she usually gives him, which is to say, she completely ignores it.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor starts hearing tales of something he thought he had left behind long ago. It should belong to the past, a story with nothing left to tell. He’s been there, done that, and put an end to it. And yet.

It begins on a visit to the forty-second century, a quick stop in a city of tall stone-grey buildings to get a replacement part for one of the engines. He finds everything’s closed, all the shutters down on the shops, hardly a person on the streets. When he finally does see a passer-by, they tell him it’s a holiday today, the day when they all give thanks for the Hybrid that saved them all thousands of years ago. He dismisses it as a coincidence, or mistranslation. Many worlds have myths of gods or other-worldly beings that saved their planet in the dim and distant past. He simply pops back into his TARDIS, skips forward a couple of days, and steps out again on the other side of the holiday.

The second time he hears the name, he asks an inhabitant of that moon for a description of this so-called Hybrid. It has two forms, they tell him, two faces. According to some stories, it’s a shape-shifter, changing from one into the other at will, or in other versions, it’s somehow both at the same time. It’s sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes short, sometimes tall, and five centuries ago it saved their whole moon from certain destruction. Annoyingly, he can’t get any more accurate information, and he suspects that most of the truth of the story got lost in the retelling down the years.

The third time this mythical Hybrid is mentioned, he asks if they have any pictures of it. The planet is a little primitive – Clara might have called it medieval, he thinks – but their cities have statues dedicated to all their past heroes and historical figures dotted about the streets, as well as colourful murals and intricate stone carvings, so they’re sure to have something. Except, according to the white-robed, grey-skinned being behind the counter in what seems to be their equivalent of a library, they don’t. Apparently the Hybrid, who saved them all from a meteor storm two centuries ago, is the one figure that they consider too important to represent in their art.

After much complaining of _how can something be too important to keep a record of_ and _perhaps you should keep track of those asteroids up there as well, while you’re at it_ , he stalks back to the TARDIS, slamming the door behind him.

*

It’s been weeks now since the Doctor last heard a story of the Hybrid, and it’s still bothering him. It’s probably just Ashildr and Clara, flying about the universe and saving people, and of course Ashildr is a hybrid in her own right. It doesn’t mean that in the future he and Clara will be able to be together, that they’ll be able to travel the universe again, saving worlds and feeling more at home than either of them ever did on their home planets.

Except no, that’s _exactly_ what he wants it to mean, and that’s the problem. He needs to prove to himself that it doesn’t, that he and Clara will never be together again, because he can’t bear to keep this tiny spark of hope glowing in his chest.

So he goes to find one of the few people older and (possibly) wiser than him. He works out the timing precisely, as near to his own timeline as he can get it, just a few years into his past.

The Doctor finds her in a futuristic fifty-seventh century city, tall buildings all of steel and glass. On a stone bench in front of one of these buildings Ashildr sits, alone, calmly watching the passers-by.

“Afternoon,” he says, sitting down next to her.

“Doctor.” Ashildr only gives him the merest glance before turning her attention back to the crowds. “Is this a social visit? No, can’t be, you never were one for dropping in, were you?”

“Ashildr, I need to ask you a question.”

“You do, don’t you?” observes Ashildr. “But why have you gone backwards in our shared timeline, I wonder? Don’t look at me like that, I’ve lived through enough time to know when timelines are out of sync. Why couldn’t you have just asked the me in the future, who would surely know more than I do now? I don’t think we would have fallen out _that_ badly, do you?” At this, she gives him a critical stare. “No, I think I’m dead, in my future, your present.” She says this all so calmly, almost like she’s bored.

The Doctor just stares at her, too surprised to deny it.

“Was it a good death?” she asks. “Did I cry? God, _please_ tell me I didn’t cry.”

“You were very brave,” says the Doctor, trying to ignore how uncomfortable he feels with this topic of conversation. “You weren’t alone. You were with Clara.”

“Ahh yes, Clara. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’d go and make pleasant conversation with your worst enemy if it was for _Clara_ , wouldn’t you?”

“There are new myths about the Hybrid,” says the Doctor, ignoring Ashildr’s jibe. “Myths on planets to which I have never been, so it can’t be me.”

And then he asks, the reason he’s here at all. “Tell me, Ashildr, are you and Clara calling yourselves the Hybrid?”

“Why would we do that? _I’m_ not the Hybrid,” replies Ashildr, looking pointedly at him.

“Then… what does it mean?” he asks, unsure, hopeful.

“Nobody has ever known what the Hybrid _means_ ,” she says. “All of the Time Lords gathered together on Gallifrey couldn’t work out who the Hybrid was or which side it was on. So they tried to destroy it, of course, because that’s what men like them do with things they don’t understand. The truth is, of course, much more complicated. There was no straight answer as to whether the Hybrid was good or bad, because it would do both.”

“So are you saying,” the Doctor asks carefully, “that the Hybrid was never a threat?”

“Oh no,” replies Ashildr casually. “The Hybrid would threaten the existence of the entire universe. But you know all about using an extraction chamber to pull someone out of their own timeline and risk fracturing the very fabric of space-time, don’t you?”

“I let her go,” he replies instantly. “I fixed it. She’ll take herself back to where she needs to be, eventually. I have absolute faith in her to do that. And I’m not there to stop her.”

“And yet, if you do that, how can you be with Clara? Because that’s what you’ve really come to ask me, isn’t it?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer.

“That’s the puzzle that you have to solve. The woman who has to die, and the future with the two of you that still has to happen.”

“And? What’s the answer?” he asks impatiently.

“The answer will come to you soon enough.”

“Care to tell me?”

“Clara will be along in a minute. You’d better be off, unless you want to make your timelines even more complicated than they already are.”

The Doctor puts on his most serious voice, the one reserved for impending disaster, or messing with Time itself. “Ashildr, if you know, then you need to tell me now.”

“You’ll work it out. Now _go_.”

As he walks back towards the TARDIS, the Doctor replays the conversation in his head, feeling like an idiot for ever having thought that asking Ashildr for help was a good idea, for thinking he could trust her. He showed his hand, made himself look desperate to have Clara back again, and all he received in return was Ashildr’s riddles.

He decides to ask Clara if she’s calling herself the Hybrid. If she is, that’ll explain everything and he’ll leave her be. And if she isn’t… he doesn’t want to think what that might mean. He can’t allow himself to hope, because if he’s wrong, it would feel like losing her all over again, and he doesn’t think he could do that another time.

*

He doesn’t look for her. He waits until Clara crosses his path again. She always does.

The bar is nothing like those found on Earth. At least he thinks so; they’re not exactly the kind of place he frequents, on any planet.

“What can I get you?” asks the dark-haired girl behind the bar, and it takes him an entire nanosecond to recognise her, but that’s only because the place is so dark.

The Doctor bites his thumbnail nervously and scans the various bottles arranged on the shelves behind the bar, all illuminated by lights behind. He glances at Clara again. She’s two hundred years old now, but still looks as young as the day he left her. He still hasn’t decided what he’s going to say to her.

“What are you doing here?” he asks instead.

“Working,” Clara replies briskly.

The Doctor finds this rather unlikely, but doesn’t press the point. “Listen. I need to talk to you.”

Clara reaches for one of the bottles on the shelves. “Not now. I finish my shift in half an hour. You can wait here, but _don’t_ draw attention to yourself.” She grabs a glass from somewhere underneath the bar and turns to place both items on the worktop behind her.

“Me?” he replies dubiously, like such a thing would be impossible.

Clara doesn't reply, her back now to him, busy measuring out a small amount from a bottle filled with clear spirit of some kind. He looks at the hair that just brushes her shoulders, hair that's been the same length for two hundred years. He tries not to think about the tattoo that it hides underneath.

A cocktail glass filled with an unnamed blue liquid and with a slice of a spiky orange-coloured fruit balanced on the rim appears in front of him. The Doctor raises an eyebrow at Clara in question.

“ _I_ am undercover and _you_ need to blend in,” explains Clara, leaning in closer so as to not be overheard.

“But _blue_?”

“Shhh.”

He’s about to explain that he’s been undercover many times and knows how it’s done, but at that moment a group of locals appear beside him and Clara turns to them with a smile. “What can I get you?” she asks.

The Doctor watches as Clara serves the customers and makes their orders. Most of the drinks appear to come in fluorescent shades of orange, green and pink. He studies his own drink suspiciously but doesn’t drink it. He knows that on some planets, one sip of some types of spirit can wipe one’s memory of the past week. He can’t remember if this planet is one of them.

Instead, he eats the slice of orange fruit from the rim of the glass, discarding the peel into the depths of the blue liquid.

Not long after, Clara appears at his side. “Let's go,” she tells him, tapping him lightly on the arm, fingertips just brushing the pile of the red velvet. He follows her out of the bar and into the street, which is bustling with the inhabitants of this planet.

He almost calls her Clara, for the thousandth time. The sentence just sounds wrong without it. “Are you travelling through space and time calling yourself the Hybrid?”

She looks at him oddly, an unidentifiable mix of emotions, but he thinks he sees pain in there somewhere. “No. Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Well, somebody is, and I need to find out who,” he tells her, suddenly feeling awkward. Of course she wouldn't do that. Why did he ever think she would?

But if neither Ashildr nor Clara are the true identity of the Hybrid, then who is? It seems unlikely that anyone else would go by that name. The hope, reburied so many times, that the Hybrid is actually himself and Clara, together again in the future, resurfaces and he pushes it back down firmly. He can't let himself think that, not yet. He needs more data. He needs to be sure before he even dares to think of...

He doesn't even know what he'd do. Tell Clara? The Doctor is not exactly one for big romantic declarations. What do humans do in this situation?

“So, where have you been lately?” Clara asks conversationally, interrupting his thoughts. “Seen any new planets? Saved anyone?”

“I haven't worked that out yet,” he replies.

*

Clara drags the Doctor to a place that she claims sells the best street food in the city. She orders a box for him, too, and he even eats a little of it. While they eat she explains that she’s trying to track down one of the most wanted criminals in this star system who, according to the information she’s been given, likes to frequent that particular bar, so Clara’s been working there the last few nights in the hopes that she turns up.

The Doctor watches her as she talks and stops himself, for the hundredth time, from telling her to _be careful_.

After dinner, the Doctor and Clara stroll through the streets, which are less busy now. They don’t have any particular destination, they just keep walking, putting off the inevitable moment when they have to part ways.

He doesn’t want her to go, and she doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave, but eventually they find themselves on the street where his TARDIS is parked.

The Doctor takes one last look at her, wanting to remember everything: the way her dark hair just brushes her shoulders; the smile that she’s giving him, soft and sad and strong all at the same time. His arms hang uselessly at his sides; he doesn’t know what to do with them. He wants to wrap them around her and protect her from all the dangers of the universe, but he knows she’d never allow that.

“Come into my TARDIS,” he says suddenly. He didn’t plan to say it, it just came out.

Clara looks up at him, surprised. “Are you sure?”

“The universe isn’t going to fall apart just because you come back to my place for five minutes,” he jokes. At least he thinks it is. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Clara frowns, and he’s sure she’s about to say no, but then she says, “Ok,” and then she’s following him into his TARDIS, and it all feels a bit unreal. They’re stepping over the invisible line that they’ve set themselves and he’s supposed to care, he really is, but he’s been doing this dance for the last two hundred years and he’s so, so tired of it.

They reach the console and come to a stop. Clara gazes up at the rotors, unable to hide just how much she’s missed this place. The Doctor wonders if he could just press a few keys, pull a lever, and steal her away with him. He wonders if the Universe would really care so much.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” says Clara eventually.

“Tea?”

“Oh no, I’m not staying. Can’t have the universe fall apart now, can we?” Clara’s tone is light, but the Doctor knows exactly how good of an actress she is.

“Of course not.”

Clara’s leaning back against the console now, both hands resting on the console edge to steady herself. “So… are you travelling with anyone at the moment?”

“No. Nobody.” The Doctor steps forward to stand awkwardly in front of her. “You know I haven’t had a regular companion since….” Since when? Since Clara, to be honest.

“Don’t ask me to come with you,” says Clara, seeming to read his thoughts.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” The Doctor notices a strand of hair falling across her face, and impulsively, without thinking, he reaches out and gently brushes it back.

“Don’t,” says Clara sharply. She grabs his arm and pushes it away from her face, rather unnecessarily he thinks, as his hand had already recoiled from the shock.

“I’m not your girlfriend,” she continues in the same aggressive tone. “Do you understand that? This constantly bumping into one another doesn’t mean anything. We hardly even know each other.”

The Doctor glances down at his arm; Clara is still gripping onto it like a lifeline, stopping him from moving away.

“No,” he says. The space between them has all but disappeared. “You’re so much more than that.”

Clara’s eyes widen in surprise, then she lets go of his arm, grabs him with both hands and pulls him down into a kiss.

This is exactly what he was avoiding. And exactly what he’s wanted for the past thousand years, give or take a few billion years in the confession dial that don’t really count. For a couple of seconds he freezes, hands hanging in the air, with Clara’s hands on his shoulders and her lips softly asking him to respond.

Then, of course, he kisses her back. Who is he to deny Clara anything? He’s a little rusty at this, but he’ll remember, he’s a Time Lord, he must have this stored away somewhere. He wraps his arms gently around her, feels the texture of her jacket under his palms, something like leather, not from Earth, not from this planet either. Clara quickly shrugs off the thick jacket in one swift movement and lets it drop to the floor. He puts his hands back on her shoulders, and this is much better, the soft, red dress that suits her so well, the fabric warm from her body heat.

The Doctor has never found his height to be a disadvantage before, until now. A solution immediately presents itself and he pauses in his kissing of Clara to lift her up onto the edge of the console. She’s now almost level with him, which is a much more suitable angle. He resumes kissing her as soon as possible, and her hands find their way into his hair, her fingers caressing and stroking through his grey curls.

This continues for several hours, or probably a few minutes in real time, until Clara says, “Let’s take this to your bedroom.”

The Doctor doesn’t have a room that would technically be called a bedroom, or indeed anything that any human would describe as a bedroom, so he does the next best thing and leads Clara to her old bedroom on the TARDIS, not letting go of her hand all the while.

He hasn’t been in this room for a long time. He has been in here since Clara left, true – but he could never bear to be in here for long. Neither could he bear to let the TARDIS remove the room entirely, so it’s just stayed there, a memorial to the one person that he could never truly let go of.

Clara closes the door and kisses him again, pulling his red velvet coat off of him as she goes.

“Wait,” he says suddenly. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” He remembers all the things that he should have been thinking about. _Universe. Fracture. Possibility. Incomplete data._

“Shut up and fuck me,” orders Clara, and he ceases his objection.

Clara slowly unbuttons his waistcoat, then his white shirt, asking him as she does so when he started _dressing so bloody formally again_. He knows the answer but doesn’t say it. Maybe she does too.

She drops the offending shirt to the floor, then slides a hand lower, fingers deliberately brushing his now extremely hard erection as she undoes the top button on his trousers. He feels a little awkward that his state of arousal has been revealed, but Clara simply raises an eyebrow and continues to undress him, unzipping his trousers and pushing them down to his knees. The Doctor steps out of them, pulling off his shoes and socks as he goes, and realises too late that she pulled down his underpants as well, so he’s now naked.

In an attempt to balance this state of affairs, he reaches behind Clara’s back in search of the fastening. Most Earth dresses have a zip at the back, if he remembers correctly, and fortunately so does this one. He carefully unzips it and pulls the top half of the dress off of her shoulders, his fingertips gently brushing her arms as he does so. He slides his hands back up her arms, to feel her soft, warm skin under his fingertips, and gently kisses the side of her neck. Clara sighs, tilts her head to the side to allow him better access, so he continues to kiss her, her neck, then under her ear, then down her shoulder.

Eventually Clara gets impatient and pulls off her dress, quickly followed by the rest of her clothing, and then she’s standing naked before him. The Doctor stares at her in wonder; she’s perfect and beautiful and he intends to kiss every inch of her skin.

Instead she pushes him onto the bed, and then he’s lying on his back and she’s on top of him, and they’re kissing again, and he can feel so much of her now, he can press his skin against hers, and he pulls her closer to him, feeling that any gap between them is too much.

Clara pulls back from him and sits upright, her weight on his hips, and he’s about to complain about the distance between them when she shifts a little, and then she’s slowly lowering herself onto his cock, and whatever he’s said before on the subject he was wrong, this, this is the best thing he’s ever experienced in the entire universe.

She lifts herself up, then presses back down, and a moan escapes him as she slides back down onto his cock.

“Clara,” he gasps, because he can’t help it, she’s beautiful, she’s amazing, and right now, just maybe, she’s his.

She pauses. “You… you remember my name?” she asks, carefully, cautiously.

“Yes,” he says immediately, which means _of course_ and _how could I ever forget you_. A split second later he remembers that she didn’t actually know that yet, that he still has to explain everything to her.

“How long,” begins Clara, but then he grabs her hips and pulls her back down onto his cock, the question is forgotten, and they soon work out a rhythm, the Doctor tilting his hips to get the perfect angle for the both of them. The explanation can wait. She’s more beautiful than any star-filled nebula, brighter than a burning sun, and as inescapable as a black hole when he’s already passed the event horizon. He gazes up at her, her eyes closed in pleasure, moaning his name, and he feels alive for the first time in two hundred years.

His orgasm comes up on him suddenly, and he only has time to gasp a _Clara_ before he comes, shouting things in Gallifreyan that she won’t understand. Then Clara is coming, too, and he watches her face, trying to commit it all to memory.

After, she collapses on top of him and rearranges herself so that she’s curled up into his side, her head resting on his shoulder. They’re both rather sticky but he doesn’t care. He shifts the arm underneath Clara a little to free it, then wraps it around her, gently stroking her shoulder with his thumb as she drifts off to sleep.

*

When the Doctor wakes it’s the first thing he’s aware of. He knows it’s there, even with his eyes still closed, even though it’s not in the room, not even on this planet, not really. He can feel a crack in the very fabric of Time that wasn’t there last night, can feel it widening infinitesimally, splitting apart the very material of the universe.

He knows what it means.

He tries to ignore this knowledge and opens his eyes. Clara’s hair is almost in his eyes, the dark strands just a blur. They’ve moved in the night, and now he’s pressed in close behind her, one arm over and around her, as if even in sleep he couldn’t bear to let her go. No, actually both arms; the other is currently being used as a pillow under her neck.

The Doctor doesn’t want to ever get up. He just wants to stay here forever. This is where he was always supposed to be, this is where he belongs, this is where he’s safe, with Clara’s body pressed up to his. He wonders if he can get away with just not telling her about the fracture. It’s so far away, maybe she’ll never know.

He closes his eyes again and nuzzles further into her hair, hoping to stay there a little longer, but he feels her move and slowly turn to face him.

“Morning,” Clara says sleepily, smiling the fondest of smiles at him.

“Mmmppffhh,” he complains. He can’t lose her now. He won’t tell her. He won’t.

“What’s wrong?” she asks instantly. Damn Clara and her actually being awake first thing in the morning. When Clara wants to know something, there’s nowhere to hide.

“I’ve made a mistake. No, Clara, not _that_ , never that,” he adds hastily, realising what that sounded like. He sits up a little and props himself up on his forearm, because this deserves a proper explanation. “I thought– I thought that there was a way for us to be together. I’ve been to planets, places I’ve never been, where they sing the praises of the Hybrid, where they say it came and saved them. And having eliminated the possibility that it was you or Ashildr using the name, and knowing that I would never do such a thing by myself, I was left with only one possibility, or so I thought. I thought that in the future, you and I must travel together again, and that that must be a future that already exists, one that wasn’t causing the universe to fracture.”

Clara says nothing, but her eyes say it all.

“I thought that I’d misjudged, before, when I thought that the Hybrid would only bring destruction,” the Doctor explains, sitting up fully now, waving his hands around in increasing agitation. “I thought I’d been too emotional when I believed the right thing to do was rip both my hearts out and leave them behind with you. I do that, sometimes. I make the wrong decision because I get too emotional. I thought– I thought that I could care for you without destroying all of time and space. I’m sorry. There’s a fracture in the very fabric of Time. And I’ve caused it.”

“Don’t apologise,” says Clara, but the tears in her eyes threaten to spill at any moment. She turns away quickly. “We had one night. And that’s more than I ever hoped for.” She gets out of bed and starts picking her clothes up off the floor.

“What are you doing, Clara?” the Doctor asks, hoping against hope that she’s not planning to do what he thinks she is.

“I’m going back to the trap street,” she says, facing away from him as she pulls her dress over her head. Her voice is steady, flat. “That’s how we fix it, right?”

“How can you be so strong?” he asks, trying to stop his voice from breaking.

“I’m not strong,” Clara replies, still keeping her back to him. “If I don’t leave right now, I’ll shatter, I’ll crumble, and I’ll never leave.” She pulls on her shoes, straightens up, and turns to face him.

“Goodbye, Doctor,” she begins.

“Clara, wait!”

“Don’t try and stop me. You know we have to do this.”

“I know.” He climbs out of bed in a semi-panic and stands in front of her, completely naked, hair all askew. He gently takes her hand. “I know. But let me take you.”


	3. Chapter 3

A few minutes later the Doctor, now dressed and wearing his red velvet coat, lands his TARDIS on Gallifrey. He checks the console display; just a few minutes since they left, perfect. He holds open the door for Clara and they step out into a brilliant while corridor.

“The extraction chamber is just in there,” he explains, gesturing to the door opposite them. “They’ll be able to put you back within one nanosecond of when you left.”

“And then the fracture will close?”

“Technically, the fracture will never have existed at all.”

Clara immediately goes in and the Doctor follows, still in a bit of a daze.

Inside, the General and two technicians are waiting for them.

“Doctor,” the General says coldly. “Clara.”

“Sorry about the whole… shooting thing,” says the Doctor, wringing his hands awkwardly.

The General ignores him, instead turning to Clara. “Are you ready for us to return you to your own timeline?” she asks.

“Yes,” answers Clara resolutely.

The General gives an order to one of the technicians, who enters coordinates into a console, and at the far end of the room, a door opens.

“On the other side of that door,” the General explains, “is the twenty-first century Earth street from which you were extracted. Once you are back in position, time will continue from where you left off and you will die. I’m sorry, but you’re doing the right thing.”

Clara turns to the Doctor, and he knows that this is to be their final goodbye, no going back this time. They stare at each other, feeling the space between them, but neither can find any words to say.

“There must be another way,” he says suddenly.

Clara shakes her head.

“What about all the people we’re supposed to save in the future? As the Hybrid?”

“That’s not us. That’s someone else using the name.”

“But….” The Doctor’s finally run out of ideas. They’ve run out of road and now Clara has to die. He glances at the General, who is watching them impatiently. Two women, one that he deliberately shot and killed, still living, and one that he would do absolutely anything to protect, who has to die. Not that he particularly wanted the General to die, but his point still stands. It’s just not fair. The General lives on, but his dearest Clara doesn’t.

And at that moment, an idea pops fully-formed into the Doctor’s head. It’s far-fetched. Ridiculous. Insane. It could never work. But he’s made so many terrible decisions when it comes to saving Clara, one of them must be right.

“General,” he says, turning to her with renewed energy, “you brought me here because you wanted to know the identity of the Hybrid. Well, now I can tell you. The Hybrid is half human, half Time Lord. But it isn’t one person but two, connected by an unbreakable bond across the universe.” He pauses for effect. “Clara and I are the Hybrid.”

“You?” says the General accusingly. Clara just gives him a look that very clearly says, _Doctor what are you doing?_

“I am the Hybrid, the nightmare that hides on the edge of possibility.” The Doctor’s eyebrows raise into angry pointed arches. “I’ve already killed billions, watched them crawl, burned them down to ash until nothing remained but their skulls. I did all that just to get what I wanted. And I was only getting started. Do you think that I can’t tear down this entire city if I choose?”

“ _Doctor_ ,” warns Clara, and his speech comes to an abrupt halt. He should have known that Clara would never go along with any plan in which he threatens utter destruction. Abandon Plan A. Actually, abandon Plan B as well. He mentally flicks through the list of Plans Acceptable To Clara. It’s worryingly short.

“Ok, ok, I’m not going to destroy Gallifrey,” the Doctor backtracks quickly, “but there are others who would try. The reason that none of your prophecies could tell whether the Hybrid would do good or bad, or whose side it was on, was because the choice hasn’t been made yet. Now it’s up to you. The choice is yours.”

Now they’re both looking at him like he’s completely mad. Maybe he is. But he can’t stop now.

“You had a hand in Clara’s death,” he continues, watching the General closely. “Fix it, and I will be on your side when you most need it. But if you let her stay dead, when trouble comes to your city, I won’t come. I will watch Gallifrey burn, until there is nothing left but ashes and ruins.”

“Doctor, you wouldn’t,” says Clara, and she looks like she’s holding herself back from intervening further. He knows that he wouldn’t, too. But maybe if he mixes enough truth into what he says, the Time Lords will believe it.

“This all does fit with what the prophecies say,” the General says. “But you must know that we cannot save your Clara. Her death is a fixed point and we cannot change that.”

“I’m not asking you to,” the Doctor replies. “I want you to give her the power to _survive_ her death. I want you to give her the power to regenerate.”

“Doctor, no,” interrupts Clara, “I don’t want that.”

“Please, Clara,” he begs. “Let me explain.”

“He doesn’t need to,” says the General. “You’re human, not Gallifreyan, and certainly not Time Lord. We cannot give you the ability to regenerate.”

“But why not?” asks the Doctor. “Tradition? You and I know perfectly well human and Time Lord physiology are similar in many respects–”

“If we give the power to regenerate to a mere human, she won’t be able to control it. Her mind will burn and the power will destroy her.”

“Clara Oswald is stronger than she looks. I’ve seen her mind withstand things that would destroy most humans.”

The General considers him for a moment. “This request is highly unorthodox. I would need to get approval from the rest of the High Council before I even considered such a move.”

“Then get it.”

The General looks like she’s about to say something else, then decides against it and leaves, taking the technicians with her.

“Doctor,” says Clara, as soon as they’re alone. “I don’t want to be a Time Lord.”

It hadn’t occurred to the Doctor that the hardest part of this plan would be getting Clara to agree. Getting the Time Lords to grant something that has never been given to a non-Gallifreyan before, easy. But convincing Clara Oswald is another matter.

“You’ll still be a human,” he tells her gently. “They’ll give you the regeneration energy, but your basic biology won’t change.” _Part human, part Time Lord, like a hybrid_ , he thinks to himself, but doesn’t point it out. There are quite enough hybrids going about the universe as it is.

“And I don’t want a longer life.”

“Why not? It’s one of the few things that unites all higher-level sentient beings across the universe, the fear of death.”

“I’m not afraid. I decided a long time ago that I would face it when it came and not run away in fear. Fear doesn’t control me. And I’ve already mourned enough losses for a lifetime.”

“But _Claraaa_ ,” he says pleadingly, and now he drops to his knees in front of her, and grasps her hands in his. “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Please.”

“What do you mean?” asks Clara, looking down at his desperate face and dishevelled hair.

The Doctor thinks of telling her exactly what he went through for four and a half billion years in the confession dial, but he knows that that was for his own selfish benefit, to get Clara back. He rubs a hand over his face. “Do you remember when we were in that research base under the lake, and you saw my ghost?”

“Yes,” she replies, not understanding.

“And when we thought that I had to die, because it had already happened – you would have done anything in the world to stop it, wouldn’t you? You would even have me change Time itself, to bring me back to you.”

“Yes.”

“Remember every time that you risked your own life to save mine?”

Clara nods.

“And you remember why? Why it was so essential that you save me?”

She doesn’t reply, but he can see the answer in her eyes.

“Please understand one thing, Clara, just one thing.” He’s on his feet again now, restless, waving his arms around wildly to emphasise each point. “I feel exactly the same. About you. If I lose you now, I would feel like– like you would feel if I died in front of you, dead, no regeneration, no coming back, just my lifeless body lying on the ground–”

“Stop it,” Clara interrupts suddenly. “Stop it. Just don’t.” She turns away, hiding her face from him.

The Doctor waits for a few moments, and when she still doesn’t speak, he asks softly, “Do you see, Clara?”

“You never said,” says Clara, her back still to him, sounding both tearful and surprised.

“Actually I did, once,” he says, and at this Clara turns sharply and looks at him oddly. “But you wouldn’t remember it,” he adds quickly.

“How would I not–” begins Clara, but fortunately for the Doctor, at that moment they’re interrupted by the return of one of the technicians.

“Sorry Lord President, Sir, Madam, we need to shut down the extraction chamber for the moment,” he tells them. “There’s a room down the corridor where you can wait for the General.”

As they leave the room Clara hisses, “How would I forget?”

“It’s probably your extremely round head. Means you can’t retain things.”

“ _Doctor_ ,” warns Clara.

“Same with your ridiculous lack of height,” he continues. “You can never reach the top shelves in the TARDIS library. You always come and ask me. Now if you had extendible arms, for example–”

“Shut up, you ridiculous _stick insect_! There is nothing wrong with me!”

The Doctor wraps an affectionate arm around Clara’s shoulders and pulls her a little closer to him as they walk down the corridor together.

*

Clara can’t stand waiting, but it’s a good half hour until the General returns.

“The High Council have agreed to grant your request,” the General tells them solemnly. “But in return, we expect you to come to the aid of our planet when we have need of it.”

The Doctor nods.

“How can we be sure that you will keep your promise?” the General asks.

“Clara,” the Doctor replies simply. “She’ll hold me to it, whether I want her to or not.”

Clara, feeling a little nervous, follows the General and the Doctor back to the extraction chamber. She’s not quite sure what she’s just signed herself up to. She glances up at the Doctor, but he won’t look at her, silent, fiddling with the edge of his coat pocket.

They don’t say goodbye to each other before it begins. If the plan works, they’ll both see each other again in a few minutes. And if it doesn’t – well, Clara can’t bear another goodbye, now that she knows for certain what they are to each other. They’ve already had too many for one lifetime.

The regeneration energy doesn’t hurt. Clara watches warily as the yellow mist, sparkling with its energy and potential, streams towards her, touches her arm and seems to flow into her. In fact, apart from a slight tingle in her arm she doesn’t feel anything at all.

The raven, however, does. Clara steps back into place on the frozen trap street, arms outstretched, and as soon as the door closes, time restarts. The raven slams into her chest with all the force of a ten-tonne truck, and as it leaves, she feels every last drop of energy, of strength, of life itself pour out of her. There’s nothing left to hold her up, so she collapses to the cobbled ground, knowing with a strange sense of certainty that this is what death feels like.

Clara thinks that the regeneration energy must have failed. That’s ok, it wasn’t for her own sake that she attempted this. She can’t move, can’t even close her eyes. She stares up to the night sky, knowing that somewhere out there, far into the future, the Doctor has made a mistake, he’s lost her, and she’s so, so sorry that he has.

Soft, uncertain footsteps make their way towards her, stopping by her head, just out of view. She hears someone crouch down, then sees the Doctor leaning over her. It’s the Doctor from the past, she realises, the one she left behind at the trap street, before the confession dial, before Gallifrey. He reaches for her wrist, tilting it gently, softly pressing two fingers to the underside, and it’s then that she realises he’s checking to see if she’s dead. And more than that, she is dead. She knows by the way his face changes when he can’t find her pulse, the quiet utter devastation clear upon his face.

“Clara,” he manages, and she’s never heard his voice so fractured and broken. He gently lifts her up and carries her inside, holding her so carefully, like she’s only sleeping and he doesn’t want to wake her.

Now Clara realises that although she’s definitely dead, she’s still conscious, and the power of her muscles is returning. It must be the regeneration energy, keeping her body functioning until she’s ready to regenerate. At first she wants to move, take a breath and tell the Doctor _I’m ok, please don’t worry about me_. Then she realises that she absolutely mustn’t, that if she tells him now, if he knows that she isn’t really dead, then maybe he won’t spend four and a half billion years in the confession dial fighting for her, and then they’ll create a whole new paradox to fracture time and space.

The Doctor gently lays her down on a soft bed, on top of the covers, and sits down next to her. For a few minutes he’s silent. He gently brushes his fingers through her hair so that it rests neatly on her shoulders, and then continues stroking her hair absent-mindedly.

At last the Doctor begins to speak.

“I’m sorry. Humans have such short life spans, but even by human standards your life was too short. I shouldn’t have kept putting you in danger. I should have given you some kind of immortality, Clara, or at least some kind of protection for your ridiculously fragile human life. I knew, Clara, I _knew_ what your loss would do to me, and yet I did nothing.

“I’m an idiot. I don’t get to keep anything good in my life. Why did I think this time would be any different? Everyone I care about I lose in the end.”

He pauses, wringing his hands desperately, then continues. “I need you, Clara. Please, _please_ , just wake up. I’ll do anything. I love you, Clara. Please.”

Clara would have frozen in shock if there had been any movement in her body. She never expected anyone to say those three words to her ever again, and least of all from the Doctor. She had thought that of the two of them, only she had said it, that time in the cloisters back on Gallifrey. She had no idea that in his timeline he’d already said it so many years ago.

He’s silent again, and Clara chances a quick look at him. His face is wet with tears, and he’s not even trying to hide it, thinking that no-one living will ever see.

“This is Ashildr’s fault,” he growls. “Her and the people who made her do this. She shouldn’t be using a quantum shade to keep law and order in her street. And now she’s betrayed me, and by extension you.”

“No,” he says at last. “You can’t be dead. I won’t allow it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I’m going to bring you back. I don’t care for the rules. If you’re dead, then the rules are wrong!” He reaches into his pocket, but doesn’t appear to find what he’s looking for. “One moment,” he mutters, wiping his face with his hands, and leaves.

Once she’s sure he’s gone, Clara turns her head to look around the room. She guesses by the furnishings that she’s in a bedroom in Ashildr’s house. She tentatively presses her fingertips to her stomach where the raven went in. The skin feels solid enough, but she can sense the damage in every cell of her body.

The Doctor returns, sits back down on the bed, and takes Clara’s hand. “I managed to convince Ashildr to let me give you this,” he says, pressing something warm and solid into her palm. “It’s a TARDIS key,” he explains, “and not just any TARDIS key, but my own personal one, the one I don’t give out to anyone. This is my promise, Clara. I will come back for you, Clara, I will save you, somehow, I swear.” He wraps her fingers gently around the key, then softly kisses her finger knuckles before laying her hand back down on the bed.

He stumbles out of the room, and only then does Clara sit up, still stunned. He loves her. He actually said it. She examines the key in her hand: it’s different from hers, with tiny Gallifreyan symbols engraved into the metal. She’ll have to ask him what they mean.

First things first, though. Clara feels a pressing need to regenerate.

*

The Doctor lands his TARDIS in Ashildr’s house and goes straight to the bedroom where he left Clara, so many years ago, but the room is empty.

He turns to see Ashildr standing uncertainly at the door.

“Where is she?” he growls, trying and failing to ignore the rising fear that it’s all gone wrong.

“She went home,” replies Ashildr simply. “She waited for you for hours. She said you would come.” He doesn’t fail to notice the way she shrinks back against the wall as he passes. For her, it’s not long since he threatened her with destruction in an attempt to save Clara’s life.

Then a thought strikes him, and he turns back to face her.

“You knew. All this time, you _knew_ that Clara would live.”

Ashildr stares blankly back at him, not understanding. For her, it’s a future she has yet to live. She’s going to watch the Doctor and Clara dance around each other for two hundred long years, each pretending to not know the other, and she’s never once going to tell them that there’s a way out.

The Doctor turns and storms straight into the TARDIS, hoping that he’ll never have to see Ashildr again.

*

Clara’s living room is full of cardboard boxes, some taped up and stacked, others open and scattered around the room. Beside the coffee table, Clara kneels in front of another box, carefully arranging its contents. Apart from the boxes, the room is almost empty; the bookshelves are bare, the cushions are missing from the sofa.

“What are you doing, Clara?” the Doctor asks.

Clara doesn’t even look up from her box. “Two _days_.”

“Two days what?” he asks, wandering into the kitchen. The kitchen is almost bare apart from the dirty plates and pans in the sink. He notes two empty egg boxes on the counter, filled only with neatly stacked empty shells.

“You’re two days late,” replies Clara. “I waited for you for hours, back at the trap street, but you didn’t come.”

“Sorry. I must have miscalculated,” the Doctor says, and leans against the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

Clara sighs and finally looks up at him. She’s not really angry with him, then. He notices that she still has the same, round face as always.

“Clara, you need to regenerate. You can’t allow your body to stay in its dying state for too long, you’ll stress every living cell in your body past breaking point and–”

“Calm down, Doctor. I already did that. I kept the same body. It _is_ an option, you know,” she adds, seeing the surprised look he’s giving her. “And then I fell asleep for a whole day, and I woke up and you _still_ weren’t here. So I decided to pack up all my things, and label each box with who I want to leave them to. Because I’m dead in this world, right?”

Only Clara Oswald would even organise her own death. “You do know that I have a time machine? We can come back here, to this flat, on this day, any time you want.”

“I know we could,” says Clara quickly, turning away to reach a vase on a high shelf. “But it feels like… this is the end. Of me being human. Of me having a normal life, on Earth. This isn’t my home any more. So I need to do this.”

The Doctor doesn’t reply. He never was very good at endings. Instead he pulls his sonic out of his coat pocket and scans her. It’s only a basic scan, far less detailed than the one he can do on the TARDIS, but it tells him enough. Clara Oswald, second body, regeneration successful, perfect health. Alive.

*

Once Clara’s finished packing, the Doctor takes her hand and practically drags her into the TARDIS with excitement.

“Where are you taking us first?” she asks, as he flicks switches and turns dials, joyfully spinning around the console.

“To show you the future!”

The planet seems even more beautiful than the Doctor remembered; it’s the perfect setting for what he has in mind. He takes Clara on a walk through beautiful gardens, where green leafy plants trail and drape, flowers bloom, and the grass underfoot gives off a slight sweet scent when stepped on.

He stops them at a place which he knows has the best view out over the city, goes down on one knee in front of Clara, and presses the thing that he’s been carrying in his pocket all day into her hand.

“Clara,” he begins. “You are the most important person to me in the entire universe, essential in fact, and I’ve met a lot of people, which is why I’m asking you–”

“What _is_ this?” interrupts Clara suddenly.

“It’s a… it’s a… proposal,” the Doctor stammers, waving his hands in explanation. “I’ve been studying Earth customs, I even did the knee thing, isn’t this the right way to do it?”

“No, not _that_. What’s _this_?” asks Clara, holding out her hand. On her palm rests the object that the Doctor gave her. It’s hard, semi-transparent with just a hint of yellow, about an inch and a half in diameter, with stepped, ridged edges like quartz.

“Oh, that. It’s azbantium. Similar to diamond, but four hundred times harder.”

Clara just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Does it have to be a diamond as the gift?” he asks. “I thought that you’d like something a little more unusual.”

“No, Doctor, but it is usually cut, polished, and made into a ring.”

“Why? How are you going to cut or grind anything like that?”

“Because it’s jewellery. It’s supposed to look pretty.”

The Doctor gets back to his feet. He had a whole speech prepared. About how this is the planet where he realised that the stories of the Hybrid saving people were more than just a one-off freak occurrence, where he first realised that he and Clara could have a future together, one in which they save worlds instead of destroying them. He wants to show Clara that future, a future that he’s finally not afraid of, now that he has her by his side.

“I’m trying to show you the future,” the Doctor says. “Our future. Down there is a great city, and every one of those bright towers and tiled roofs is there because in the future we save their ancestors from a meteor storm that would otherwise have broken up the entire continent. I’ve been an idiot. I thought that I never get to be happy, that nothing good ever comes from it. But it does. Look at it, Clara.” He waves a hand in the direction of a low stone wall that is more ornamental than functional.

Clara turns to see, but a puzzled look appears on her face. “I wouldn’t really call it a _city_. Village, maybe.”

The Doctor finally looks at the city and sees – very little. That’s definitely not the city that was here last time. Did he enter the wrong coordinates into the TARDIS? But no, this feels like the same planet, even the grass is the same as he remembers.

Suddenly, the ground shakes, followed by a rumble that the Doctor instantly recognises.

“I may have made a miscalculation,” he tells Clara. “We’re too early. And that meteor storm that I mentioned, it’s happening now.”

“Don’t suppose you also found out _how_ you save them?” she asks.

The Doctor just glares.

“Well, we’re not going to figure it out up here,” says Clara, turning to go back the way they came.

“Wait! Clara!” he says, suddenly realising that he’s losing his chance and he _needs_ to do this. He drops to one knee again, both knees in fact, Earth custom be damned, grabs hold of Clara’s hand, and says, before he loses his nerve, “Clara, will you marry me?”

Clara stares at him for a few unbearably long seconds, and he can’t guess whether she’s pleased, surprised, or thinks he’s a complete idiot.

“Of course,” she replies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Unconsciously, each of his hands find hers, their fingers interlace, and he grins at her with excitement. Her answering smile is all he needs.

“Ready to save another planet, Clara Oswald?”

“Always.”

Another meteor hisses through the air nearby, almost dangerously close, and hits the ground with an explosion of earth and noise. The Doctor looks around for the quickest path down the hill to the town below, not once letting go of Clara’s hands.

“Run.”


End file.
